Rose Michtom

Rose Katz was born in Romania in 1867, a Jewish immigrant who married Morris Michtom in New York in 1887. He kept a candy shop on Tompkins Avenue in Brooklyn by day; at night the two of them sewed stuffed animals together. In 1902, after a newspaper cartoon showed Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a captive bear, they made a jointed stuffed bear and called it Teddy's bear. Out of the demand for it they founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, which became one of the largest toy makers in the United States. The teddy bear is now made everywhere and by everyone, and no toy has comforted more children.